The most important fact about 2011 is that it is the year before 2012. That year will be marked by elections and leadership transitions; the prospect of those changes will influence more immediate political calculations. So, 2011 reckons to be a year in which political leaders position themselves to exploit an evolving political environment. There is little reason to expect those leaders to expend hard-earned political capital to deal with enduring problems. Thus, those problems will endure longer still and become even more intractable. It is a formula for frustration.

This is nothing new for Japan. The country has slogged through a messy transition since the end of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rule in 2009, but the Democratic Party of Japan's learning curve refuses to flatten: The party seems as bereft of direction and leadership as the day it took power. Rather than tackling national problems, the country's political class seems content to let the government founder. The economy stumbles along. Ties with the United States have improved after bottoming out during the Hatoyama interregnum, but there is little hope that 2011 will see the revitalization of that relationship, something that was anticipated in 2010, the 50th anniversary of the bilateral security alliance. Public disillusionment is mounting and disapproval of the government is reaching pathetic levels, but there is little sign of a genuine alternative. The LDP seems content to bide its time, hoping that the public will return it to office, even though it has little to offer apart from time-tested — and failed — policies.

In China, all eyes are focused on the leadership change in 2012 and the coming to power of the fifth generation. Most observers see the increasingly assertive foreign policy that Beijing adopted last year as a product of that transition. There is no profit in moderation in foreign policy if it opens a leader to charges of being insufficiently zealous in defending national interests. Thus, China too will stick to its current path, doing all it can to avoid destabilizing changes, consolidating consensus to ensure that there is no dissent to the handover in power that looms.